


the ballad of brad and claire

by stupidsecretthings



Category: Bon Appétit Test Kitchen (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, basically oblivious idiots in love, claire's a fan, famous!brad, musician!brad, some angst probably, some mutual pining for your enjoyment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 10:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22562545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stupidsecretthings/pseuds/stupidsecretthings
Summary: “i’ve always wanted to make music but never did.”the alternate universe in which brad did (and did it very well).
Relationships: Brad Leone/Claire Saffitz
Comments: 14
Kudos: 48





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> welcome! i couldn't escape this idea, try as i might (i didn't try very hard). it's basically just an excuse for me to write starstruck claire and denim/leather/bandana brad, let's be honest. 
> 
> i hope you enjoy! 
> 
> please remember what the 'f' in rpf stands for friends! :)

Claire kind of loves Brad Leone. 

Okay… she definitely loves Brad Leone. A lot. Far too much. Maybe. 

She will defend to her dying breath that’s it’s not her fault— it’s his for being such a lovable guy. So few celebrities nowadays have such magnetic personalities; she finds most of them mildly rude at best and entitled, arrogant assholes she’d happily punch in the face at worst. 

But Brad… Brad is seemingly unaffected by his fame. Although she’d never openly admit to knowing any of these things, she’s pretty sure he wears the same clothes he wore when he was starting out, even though he’s almost definitely at least a millionaire by now (if not a multi-millionaire with how easily his albums sell). If he attends any events like premieres or award shows he usually wears the same suit to each, again, seemingly the same one he’s had since the early days. He still lives near his mom in New Jersey, he doesn’t fret too much over what he posts on Instagram, and he’s funny and he’s kind and he’ll make friends with anyone. 

Claire discovered Brad sort of by accident. She was back in college, and she was looking for some music to play in the background while she wrote up some handwritten notes onto her laptop so she wouldn’t lose them, and Brad had discovered YouTube a few months before and was using it in between open mic nights to play his music to an audience in some shape or form. 

His music was — _is_ — wonderful. 

There’s something endearing about a 6’4” man who confesses he has a loud mind and difficulty sitting still doing just that, his fingers strumming and plucking at guitar strings as he sings in a soft, mellifluous voice. Claire found it very hard _not_ to fall in love with him. 

* * *

As a result of this whole ‘loving Brad Leone’ thing, she’s pretty sure she chokes on air when Vinny tells her that the Back to Back shoot he’s preparing for is, in fact, a Back to Back with music sensation Brad Leone. 

“Uh— what? Who? Are you— Brad Leone? He’s gonna… he’s gonna be here?”

“Yes, Claire,” Vinny says teasingly, a smile in his eyes and light-hearted, friendly mockery in his tone. “If he weren’t going to be here I’d definitely be wasting my time setting up all this camera equipment now wouldn’t I?”

“Like, he’s gonna be in the test kitchen. Brad Leone’s going to be in the test kitchen? Today? When I’m also in the test kitchen?”

“I mean, unless you plan on spontaneously combusting in the next hour or so, yes,” Vinny deadpans, turning back towards the tripod so he can angle the camera to properly capture all 6’4” of Brad. 

Claire’s hand freezes where it is holding a wooden spoon over a bowl of cake batter that doesn’t seem quite right, somehow. She knows she’s going to bake it anyway, because, obviously, she’s a glutton for punishment. That’s also why she’s not going to take refuge in the office block upstairs while Brad’s here instead of almost definitely humiliating herself in front of the man whose career she’s been following for ten years (_that_, and the fact that she needs a cake recipe and a pumpkin pie recipe to submit to be cross-tested by the end of the week). 

At this point, Carla appears over Claire’s shoulder, all ready to have her mic attached for her Back to Back shoot with _Brad Leone_. It’s no big deal. It’s fine. Claire’s fine. 

“Claire,” Carla asks, looking at Claire with a mixture of bemusement and concern. “You alright honey?”

“Huh?” she asks, snapping out of the daze she’d stumbled into and suddenly remembering the cake batter exists as a thing she’s supposed to be trying to fix. “What? Yeah, I’m fine.”

She’s not fine. 

“You’re not fine,” Carla responds wisely, unconvinced and openly amused now at Claire, who’s becoming visibly flustered at the comment. “Are you a fan of Brad?”

“A fan? Uh, yeah, I guess you could say that, he has some good music.”

(Of which she owns: all of it.) 

“Uh-huh,” Carla hums, clearly not fooled by Claire’s feigned nonchalance. “Well, I better go get ready, he’s gonna be here soon.”

“What? Don’t you start shooting at two?”

“Usually,” Carla agrees, then shrugs, “but Brad likes to be early to things, I think.” 

Well, there’s something about Brad Leone she didn’t already know. Against her will, she finds anxious energy starting to well up in her chest at the prospect of being in the same room as the one celebrity she could resolutely say (she wouldn’t, but she _could_) is her all time number one celebrity crush. There’s something about the denim and leather and bandanas mixed with too-blue eyes she’s 99% sure should be illegal and riotous brown curls that’s always drawn her in. 

He also has a big personality without it being oppressive; Claire’s introversion means she tends toward gentler personalities, the types of people she regularly encountered in the Harvard library or while doing her masters, but somewhat inexplicably, she feels as though Brad wouldn’t be too much for her at all. 

Claire hears Brad before she sees him. She’s on the back station, a little shrouded in shadow because of how dark it always is down there (which is precisely why she prefers her usual station at the front), and facing away from the entrance to the kitchen, when Brad announces his presence with, “Hola!” 

Carla turns with a smile and walks towards Brad. He moves to meet Carla in the middle, where Claire can see them, and Brad offers his hand to Carla to shake. “You must be Carla, it’s very nice to meet you.” 

Carla smiles warmly at the very gentle, very polite, very tall celebrity in front of her, and Claire can see from the look on her face that Brad’s going to be Carla’s favourite celebrity they’ve had on the show. “It’s very nice to meet you too, Brad. Welcome to the test kitchen.”

“Why thank you. Carla, this is Alex Delany. He tells me where to be and when to be there,” Brad introduces, revealing a tall (though not _quite_ as tall as Brad) man with ginger curls and a delighted smile that Claire hadn’t even noticed before, too interested in Brad to be paying any attention. 

Claire shrinks back into herself, forcing herself to turn her focus from the vivacious, joyous energy encompassing Brad Leone to the cake batter she’d definitely over-mixed. She starts pouring it into the cake tin anyway, hoping she’ll be able to figure out where she initially went wrong (pre-overmix and pre-Brad) after it’s baked. 

She’s still watching Brad from the corner of her eye because she just can’t stop herself. He looks… way too good, unfairly good to just be waltzing into her place of work and distracting her without even realising it. He’s wearing a denim shirt under a leather jacket and her favourite bandana of his (no, she will not admit to having a favourite colour of bandana on him; no, it’s not red). He’s got the very characteristic Brad Leone scruff, the one that he didn’t have ten years ago when he was starting out and Claire discovered him. Claire thinks his eyes are much more blue in real life, even from a distance. 

Brad’s been in the kitchen maybe five minutes, chatting amiably with Vinny, Carla and Alex while Vinny mics him up and Carla goes over the ground rules to make it easier when the director (Dan, Claire thinks) shows up in another five minutes time. Claire has finally managed to switch her brain off, finally not watching Brad in the non-creepiest way she could manage, finally focusing on doing her actual job—when Brad decides he should go over and introduce himself. 

He appears at her side like some kind of apparition, and Claire almost throws her rolling pin at him when he leans over to look at her dough and ask, “Whatcha makin’?”

“Oh, Jesus!” she startles, and bristles just slightly at the easy laugh Brad lets out at Claire’s stance holding a rolling pin as if it were a weapon. 

He holds his hands up in mock surrender, amusement dancing in his blue, blue eyes that are suddenly very, very close to Claire. “Didn’t mean to scare ya,” he smiles, “just curious.” 

Claire flushes and forces her gaze away from his, turning her attention instead to hitting her dough with her rolling pin again. “It’s, uh, it’s pie dough. I’m trying to flatten it out.”

Brad leans his elbows on the countertop so his eyes are level with Claire’s, and his head tilts like a confused puppy dog at the pastry Claire’s still hitting. “Don’t you normally… y’know,” he starts, doing some kind of motion with his hands to imitate rolling with a rolling pin, “roll it instead of… hitting it? Or this like therapy?”

Claire laughs despite herself, turning her head to meet Brad’s eyes again. Brad Leone being quite so close to her, taking active interest in her work, isn’t what Claire thought would happen when she woke up this morning. She didn’t think she’d be stood over a pie dough, with a failed cake in the oven, looking into the eyes of the man who currently has a sold-out tour of the biggest venues in North America. 

What’s that phrase again?

‘Life’s like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.’ 

Brad’s eyes are blue and bright and buoyant, brimming with curiosity and amusement and a little bit of teasing, and Claire feels struck by how familiar it feels. As though her being stood at the back station of the test kitchen ribbing with Brad Leone as she bakes is normal and _right_, somehow. She shakes away the thoughts. 

“I mean, kinda. It’s to make the butter more malleable but I take my anger out on it too.”

“Multi-purpose!” He exclaims and slaps the work surface, “I _like_ it.” 

Before then, Claire had never really thought about all the exuberant energy that Brad displays, had always, on some level, thought it was an act he put on for the media, but seeing him now with no cameras rolling (yet, at least) she reevaluated the thought that Brad was any less genuine than he seemed. 

“Hey, Brad!” the guy Brad had introduced Carla and Vinny to as Alex called from across the room, where he was now stood with Dan. “C’mere man we’re going over what to do.” 

“Comin’ bud!” Brad replies, and then turns to Claire, that warm smile lighting his blue eyes again in a way that makes Claire’s heart seize and her brain short-circuit. “It was very nice to meet ya. I, uh, I never got your name? I’m Brad Leone.” He sticks his hand out for her take and she has to stifle a wide grin at how endearing that is. 

“Claire Saffitz,” she introduces, meeting his gaze as she slots her small hand into his much bigger one, “It’s very nice to meet you too, Brad.”

He walks away from her almost hesitantly, like he doesn’t want to, but Claire banishes the thought immediately. Because, he’s _Brad Leone_, and she’s just a pastry chef with a failed cake baking and an incomplete pumpkin pie recipe. She sighs and gets back to work. 

* * *

Claire manages to get by while only being mildly distracted by Brad’s presence in the kitchen. She’s a professional, dammit, and she refuses to turn into a blushing schoolgirl with a crush just because her favourite celebrity is in the room. She eats a few bites of an unpleasantly dense, chewy cake and realises which proportions she messed up (over-mixing aside), and then she bakes it again. It’s perfect. 

Her pie filling could use some more work, but it’s not too bad, especially considering that half of her attention was, despite her attempts to stop it, fixated on Brad. He smiled throughout the entire shoot, laughing with Carla and effortlessly following her instructions. Brad handled the knife deftly, easily cutting and chopping exactly what Carla needed him to exactly how she needed him to. 

Claire stubbornly refuses to acknowledge how her cheeks flushed when she watched his ease in the kitchen. 

Brad, seemingly against all odds, appears to _belong_ in the test kitchen. He’s obviously adept at cooking—his final dish rivalled Carla’s in spite of a lack of formal kitchen training, and when Carla pointed that out, his ears burned bright red as he stumbled his way through a childhood story about his mom. 

The cameras had been packed away an hour ago, but Brad (after asking permission), had decided to stick around the test kitchen for the rest of the day, and so, he’s currently flitting from station to station, peering over people’s shoulders and laughing and asking questions as they cook. 

  
Alex Delany has the same inherently likeable quality about him as Brad. He wandered over to Claire’s station while Brad and Carla were switching and tasting plates and just never left. He’s been trading stories with her over the past hour, talking to her about Brad on tour—she has to smother a fond smile as he tells her about Brad in the early days, when he barely needed a manager to organise his events, all excitement and sheepishness and disbelief. Claire tells him about adventures in Paris and some shenanigans of the found family in the test kitchen. He smiles and laughs and his eyes sparkle when he does. 

Delany’s mouth opens to speak when it subsequently drops for a split-second before he recovers (though not fast enough that she misses it), and he straightens back up to his full height. “Uh, who’s that?” he asks, voice softer than she’s heard it so far. Claire can’t help the smirk that spreads across her lips as she sees Molly start puttering around the kitchen, absentmindedly gathering equipment and ingredients. 

“That’s Molly, she’s one of our food editors.” She watches, amused, as he appears to muster up courage to go over to Molly; Claire gets the distinct feeling that a shy, speechless Alex Delany is not one often seen. “You should go talk to her,” Claire suggests, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling too wide. 

“You think?” he asks, a hint of nervousness creeping in before he clears his throat and rolls his shoulders back. “I mean, yeah, sure, I should.” 

Maybe it was cruel to send him in Molly’s direction, she’s a tough nut to crack and Delany definitely has his work cut out for him. But when Molly turns to him with an incredulous look in her eye and his plastered-on suave confidence doesn’t waver one bit, she knows he’ll be just fine. 

Shaking her head slightly in amusement as Molly brushes past him for the _third_ time, she focuses on what she’s actually getting paid to do, which, regrettably, does not include staring at Brad Leone from across the room. While her pie finishes baking, she needs to make the frosting for the cake and whip the cream to serve with the pie, as per Chris’ request for “the ‘gram”. 

“Whatcha doin’ Saffitz?” Brad materialises beside her, and for the second time, Claire almost has a heart attack because of Brad Leone. 

“Christ, Brad,” she scolds, letting out a deep breath, “you have _got_ to stop doing that.” 

“Sorry,” he says, but the mischief and delight shining from the depths of his too-blue eyes negate the apology completely. 

“Uh-huh,” she replies, unconvinced. “Frosting, to answer you question. Mostly I’m just killing time until my pie’s finished.” 

“You’re making frosting for your pie?” he asks dubiously, and Claire has to laugh at the concern flickering across his face, his brow raised in skeptical question. 

“No, Brad,” she giggles (and did she really just—_giggle_?), “I’m making frosting for my _cake_, while waiting for my pie, which is a completely separate entity.” 

“Makes sense,” he chuckles back, seemingly proud of himself at having drawn a laugh from her as he angles his neck to get a better look at the cake still cooling on the countertop. Her timer goes off and effectively stops the words that were about to leave Brad before they had a chance to form. “It done?” he asks instead and she nods, her and Brad start walking in synchrony to the oven. “I’ll get the door for ya,” he offers, already moving to do so. 

“Thanks, Brad,” Claire smiles, grabbing a towel to grasp the hot sheet pan with. As soon as the pie is visible to Brad, he lets out a low, equally surprised and excited whistle. 

“Uh, Claire, is that what I think it is?”

She raises an eyebrow at him, amused (and more than a little charmed by the way his entire face lights up when he grins), “Depends what you think it is.”

He rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Pumpkin pie?” he asks, and he sounds so hopeful that it _is_ pumpkin pie that she really can’t fight the emphatic nod she responds with. Way to keep it cool, Claire. “Fuck yeah!” he cheers, then becomes suddenly bashful, “Can I have a slice? Pumpkin pie’s my favourite.”

“Really?”

“Yup, my mom used to hafta make two on thanksgiving because I’d eat it right outta the fridge, oh my god— I got in so much trouble for that.”

“Brad,” she laughs, disbelieving and impossibly endeared, “you have got to be joking. You got in trouble for that?” 

“_All_ the time, Claire!” 

Brad and Claire stand at her station for the next half an hour, laughing with each other as they work their way through a pie that, while it isn’t perfect, is pretty damn good (_after_ Chris has taken his pictures, obviously, Claire doesn’t have a death wish). Brad helps her decorate a cake even though he has no idea what he’s doing, and by the end of it, the cake is kind of a mess and Claire has tears streaming down her face as she laughs. Brad laughs right along with her, blue eyes shining. 

Claire pulls her head up from where it was resting against the table, catches Brad’s gaze, takes in the perfect cake with the imperfect frosting, the leather jacket strewn across her station and the owner of it leaning down across it so he’s eye-level with her like he belongs there, like he’s always there. An unexpected, warm feeling throbs in her chest, a feeling of: this is _right_ and _good_ and how it’s _supposed_ _to be_. 

Clearly, her heart does not have the same hesitations as her head. The one that’s yelling that he’s way out of her league, that he’s probably dating some model or something because he _can_, that he—

“Hey,” he murmurs, dragging her back into the moment, and his voice is softer than she’s heard it so far. “You got a little somethin’—”

He’s pointing to his lip, and she rubs at hers, mumbling, “Where? Did I get it?”

“No, uh, c’mere,” he says, and before her brain has the time to process his soft-spoken words he’s in her space and his fingertip is skimming her lip. Claire feels heavy and light all at once, feels heat flame in her cheeks and spread down her neck and her heart skip several beats. Claire feels like a seventeen year old with a crush, the barest touch setting her on fire. He pulls his finger away, far too slowly for how keyed up she feels and shows her the smudge of frosting he’d wiped off her lip. “There ya go,” he utters, and it Claire hadn’t just lost her mind she’d hear how wrecked he sounds. 

“Yeah,” she whispers, “uh, thanks.” 

“My pleasure,” he replies, and turns so fast Claire almost doesn’t see the tips of his ears flush red.

* * *

Claire drinks a glass (or several) of wine that night. She sits, the lights in her apartment dimmed, the book she attempted to read cast away on the other side of the couch as she mindlessly watches Real Housewives with her feet folded underneath her. 

Her mind feels foggy, and not because of the alcohol. 

(Maybe a little bit because of the alcohol).

All she can think about is _Brad_. About how he just _fit_ into her life in the test kitchen, about how she didn’t feel her social battery wearing thin despite spending hours with him, about how somehow his eyes glow even more bright blue when he laughs (and he laughed a lot). 

About how he’s coming back to the test kitchen tomorrow. To help her bake pumpkin pie. 

She doesn’t think her heart is ever going to regain normal rhythm. It’s been hopping and skipping all day, leaping into her throat every time he smiled at her, every time he nudged her. She’d shivered at a blast of cold air that disappeared as quickly as it appeared and he’d put his leather jacket over her shoulders; she nearly died. 

An ad flashes on the screen, telling her to pre-order Brad Leone’s new album, and she scrambles for the remote, flicking the TV off with an exaggerated groan as she buries her head in her hands.

This is so ridiculous. 

He’s just a guy. A really good guy, who’s way out of her league, who sells out stadiums and an absurd amount of albums, and who ties her up in knots. Who liked her cooking enough to _come back_. 

With really, really, unfairly blue eyes. 

She’s so screwed. She groans again, just for the hell of it, and drains her wine glass. She pours herself another one. She laments the fact that she doesn’t have something stronger. 

When she turns the TV back on, she’s met with Brad Leone’s inappropriately handsome face in the same leather jacket he wore earlier with too-blue eyes she thinks will drown her one day soon. 

Figures. 


	2. Chapter 2

“Hey, dude!” Alex leans across the table and snaps his fingers at Brad, who startles. 

“What the hell?” Brad grouches, narrowing his gaze at his manager while Alex raises an incredulous brow. Brad slumps back in his seat, actively willing his brain to just _turn off_ because it’s spinning and spinning and spinning — and he’s getting damn close to losing his mind.

“You know _what_, Leone,” Alex scolds teasingly, “you’re over there all moony over a pretty chef and you haven’t heard a single freaking word I’ve said about _your_ tour. Which starts in a _month_, by the way. Do you even know your setlist?” 

“I know my fuckin’ setlist, Delany, who d’ya think I am? And I’m not _moony_, ‘kay?” 

He laughs, drawls out, “Right, _sure_,” then takes a long swig of his drink. “What have I _just_ been talking about then?”

“What?”

“Just now, for the past—” Alex checks his watch for dramatic effect because, of course he does, “—ten minutes or so.” 

Brad’s mind goes blank, so he decides to switch tactics, from defence to offence, because he doesn’t even really know what he’s thinking himself and he doesn’t need Delany dissecting it for him. “Probably that blonde chef you followed around the kitchen like a puppy dog,” he teases, smiling mischievously at a disbelieving Alex Delany. 

He scoffs, “Psh, shut up man, I wasn’t following her around.” He’s a little too quiet, a little too sheepish for the usual Delany swagger that Brad would get in response to a statement like that, and Brad decides that if Delany can torture him—if he gets to call him moony, of all things—then Brad can do a little torturing of his own. 

“Oooh,” Brad grins, leaning forward, and the look in Delany’s eye tells Brad he knows what’s coming. “You _like_ her.” 

“What, no, Brad I don’t—”

“You _so_ do. Wow. Never thought I’d see the day that the one and only Alex Delany, womaniser extraordinaire, was all _smitten_.” 

“Brad, shut up,” Delany warns, sounding a little whiny and Brad’s grin grows even wider, the spark in his eye a little more evil. “I am not smitten—”

“Alex and Molly sittin’ in a tree, _K-I-S-S-I-N—_ ow!” 

“It’s what you deserve,” Alex says, a little spitefully as he glares at Brad from the other side of the table. To an objective observer, it would not even be comprehensible that these two grown men were not only successful, but in the midst of a business dinner after a day of work. Brad rubs his shin, where Delany _kicked_ him, and glares back at his manager. “To get back on topic,” Delany says pointedly, giving Brad another swift kick in warning, wordlessly saying _don’t you dare start that shit again_, “we really need to start preparing for the tour.”

“What’s there to prepare?” Brad asks, “Album’s done, most of the tour’s sold out anyway so it’s not like we gotta do all the promo we had to last time,” he shrugs, sighs, scrubs a hand over his face. Suddenly, that objective observer who saw Brad and Alex goofing around like children would watch the weight of the world settle over Brad’s shoulders, would notice the weariness lingering in his movements. 

“I’m kinda tired, Delany,” he murmurs, leaning forward to rest against the table, “I haven’t stopped working in a decade, man, and I’m exhausted. I love my job, no doubt about that— best job in the fuckin’ world, far as I’m concerned, dream come true, but sometimes I wish I could just sit back an’ I dunno, read a book or somethin’.” 

Delany levels Brad with an unconvinced look. “Read a book?” he repeats, skeptical and mildly amused. 

“Right, okay, maybe not _read a book_, but ya know, somethin’,” he waves his hands in the air as if the words will just appear to him because he wants them to, “whatever normal people do.”

“Like… go on dates with chefs who have grey streaks in their hair?” Delany ventures, and when Brad’s jaw ticks and his body slumps in lieu of a response, he decides to let it go, opting instead for leaning towards Brad and sighing slightly. (He makes sure his supportive friend mode is well and truly activated before he starts speaking again). “Brad, you’ve worked your ass off this past ten years, you know it, I know it, the fans know it. I’m your manager, sure, but I’m also your friend, dude, why didn’t you come to me with this sooner?” 

Brad shrugs, fiddling absently with his jacket, “I dunno. I think I jus’ thought if I kept going and kept going I’d be too busy to realise how tired I was.” 

Delany sighs again, low and slow and like he’s preparing Brad for bad news. “That makes zero sense,” Alex tells him, hesitation flickering over his face before he speaks again. “Look,” he starts, and Brad swallows, lets his mask filter back over his features before he meets Alex’s eye again. “I can’t give you the whole month off before your tour, you know that. But I _can_ do most of it without you.” 

Something dangerously close to hope starts blooming in Brad’s chest. He tries to tamp it down. 

Delany sees the shift in Brad and can’t help his smile. “Just… take some time, alright? Chill out. Do all the shit you love to do for the next month, hang out with your favourite people,” Alex tells him. “This is a long tour, we can’t have the talent burning out on us before it’s even started, that wouldn’t look good at all.” And just like that Alex shifts the mood back into easy comfort between friends. Brad can’t help the wide, relieved, grateful smile that lights his face. 

“Stick around New York though,” Delany warns, “for when I do need you for something. You know as well I do that tour prep can get crazy.” 

“You got it, bud,” Brad grins, and before another word is said, the food arrives, effectively ending the conversation. 

Alex teases Brad about the pretty grey-streaked chef at least five more times. 

Brad teases Alex about the pretty blonde chef at least six. 

* * *

Brad collapses onto an absurdly comfortable hotel bed hours later with an exaggerated groan. 

He just can’t stop thinking, try as he might. There’s this pastry chef that’s gotten herself all tangled up in his brain, and every time his eyes close he thinks about pumpkin pie and cream cheese frosting and brown eyes and salt and pepper waves and— 

He’s screwed, he knows. You don’t spend four hours in the company of someone and walk away unable to get them out of your head if you’re not screwed. It’s as if Claire somehow imprinted himself onto him; he walked out of the test kitchen almost fully intact, but with a little bit of Claire Saffitz left burned into his skin, left floating through his bloodstream. With a little bit of him belonging to her. 

He groans again, throwing his arm over his eyes to block out the oppressively bright lights above him, and there’s Claire _again_. Her eyes are bright and brimming, brown and shiny and amplified by her smile, elevated. Her hair’s tugged out of her face in this messy bun-type situation at the back of her head (he knows nothing about hair and he’s not going to pretend he does), and the way it exposes the pale column of her neck has his brain short-circuiting. The way she fits into those jeans should be criminal, in Brad’s unbiased opinion, because now it’s consuming him, the curves of her legs and ass. 

The distinct feeling of being _lost_ and _drowning_ all too familiar to Brad starts dancing in his veins, squeezing his heart and tapping at his lungs and tying his stomach in knots. It’s that feeling he gets when he feels out of his depth, the feeling he had when he headlined a stadium for the first time or played at a festival with artists ten times bigger than him. Because Claire Saffitz has him well and truly out of his depth. She’s gorgeous and funny, and, although so clearly meticulous and particular, oddly unbothered by his boisterous energy and tendency to fuck things up. If he spends too long thinking about how her jeans fit or the way her hands moved or the line he’d like to kiss up her neck, the room might set on fire. 

He’s so, so screwed. (And so, so gone for her). 

What else is he supposed to do except write? Music’s in his blood, and has been for a long time; it’s his therapy. He writes about brown eyes and a soft smile, about jeans and smeared frosting, about an imagined life where he gets to be the lucky son of a bitch she loves. 

God, fuck, he barely knows her. He’s spent one day with her, if that, but he’s aware he’s on a dangerous path. One that if he doesn’t navigate correctly could ruin him. _She_ could ruin him. 

He writes about how he thinks he should hate her. That she should balk at his propensity to be too loud or too much of this or that, that he shouldn’t like the way her hands kept twitching to correct his course when he was messing the frosting on her cake up. He shouldn’t like her, someone so obviously Type A in personality, someone so clearly a juxtaposition to him. He shouldn’t like her, but, inexplicably, he does. 

Placing his pen down, he sighs, deep and bone-tired. The clock blinking at him from across the room says it’s almost three in the morning, and Brad doesn’t even change clothes before flopping onto the bed, face-first, falling asleep faster than he has in a while.

* * *

Brad gets to the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen at ten the next morning, and finds it considerably quieter than it was yesterday upon his one in the afternoon arrival. Vinny’s there, stood beside Carla at a stovetop with someone he hasn’t met yet. Claire, however, is absent. He frowns, glances at the station Claire was working at yesterday, and then forces himself to focus on Vinny and Carla and the other guy. 

The other guy turns out to be called Chris. 

Chris Morocco introduces himself with a deceptively firm handshake and a, “I’m a big fan of yours, man, you make good stuff.” 

* * *

The next hour passes relatively uneventfully; Brad and Vinny really hit it off, and he and Chris team up to poke fun at the holes in Andy’s shirt. Andy, though he tries _valiantly_ to defend himself, is officially defeated when Molly enters the arena, sending him packing with a witty one-liner that earns her a scoff. (Brad watches Molly make him a coffee later, watches her hand it to him and tell him they’re even, sees Andy sigh and begrudgingly say, “_fine_”, with an eye-roll and a smile hidden behind his mug). 

Brad likes it in the test kitchen. 

It’s industrial, sure, with the metal fixtures and fridges, with the sleek marble and the ovens travelling up the walls, but it’s homey too. It’s full of life, of people and laughter and food, and Brad takes to the atmosphere like a fish takes to water. 

The huge windows spanning one of the walls make the test kitchen bright, make it feel big and airy and less like it’s on the thirty-fifth floor of One World Trade Centre in Manhattan. Claire Saffitz walking into the test kitchen, hair loose and spilling in waves over her shoulders, makes the room impossibly brighter. 

The first thing he notices is the iced coffee in her hands, the way she’s sipping at it like she needs it to function, and he tries not be impossibly endeared by it (he fails). The second thing he notices is that she’s wearing a dress. Which, how does she expect him to function like a normal human being when she’s wearing a dress? The third thing he notices is that he’s staring, so he quickly averts his gaze, impossible as it seems. 

She stops to talk to Molly on her way over to him, where he’s stood talking to Vinny. Or, more accurately, vaguely, distantly hearing Vinny say something to him but not listening at all. “Hey,” Vinny says, waving his hand in front of Brad’s face. “Earth to Brad, _hello_? You in there?” 

“Yeah, hi. I’m in here.”

“You sure?” Vinny asks, skeptical, teasing. “You mean you weren’t staring at a certain pastry chef who walked into the room?”

“Aw, jeez,” Brad groans, rolling his eyes. “Not you too.”

Vinny, Brad notes with a heavy feeling he can only describe as _dread_, looks like he’s delighted to have heard Brad say this and is very obviously gearing himself up for a response Brad is pretty sure he won’t like when— 

“Hey, Brad,” Claire smiles, and it’s so bright, and so beautiful, and Brad is _so_ _screwed_. “I didn’t think you’d be here already.”

“Uh, _yeah_, Claire,” he says and he’s pretty sure his mouth is saying things without his brain’s permission. “I’ve been puttin’ in more work around here than you. What time do you call this?”

For a second, he worries. He worries that they’re not quite there yet, that she won’t take as well to the teasing and the joking as Andy did, that he’s pushed a little too much on the line between strangers and friends. But then, she narrows her eyes at him, the corners of her lips tug up, and her arms cross against her chest playfully. 

“Brad,” she says, matter-of-fact and teasing. “You don’t even work here.”

“Well, maybe I should,” he shrugs, smiling wider and more genuine than he can remember doing in a long time. “I tell ya, Saffitz, you got some kinda dream job here, not showin’ up until eleven in the morning.” 

“I didn’t only just show up Brad,” she chuckles, and starts taking off her jacket and he’s fine, totally fine. He’s not looking at her dress at all. Not at all. Nope. She pulls on an apron and starts tying it and he starts breathing again. “I had a meeting upstairs.” 

“Yeah, sure ya did, Saffitz.”

By the time Brad remembers he was talking to Vinny, Vinny has suspiciously disappeared from the test kitchen completely. Huh. 

* * *

Brad and Claire make pumpkin pie. Claire stares at a piece of paper with her handwriting sprawled all over it, numbers and letters and words all jumbled together in what she seems to think resembles a recipe. She starts fiddling with quantities, changing the amount of nutmeg and whatever else, correcting the measurement on her paper. Brad’s in awe watching her, seeing the ease with which she navigates the kitchen and the recipe, knowing _this is too much_ or _not enough_ and _actually, why didn’t I put in the other egg yesterday?_

Claire Saffitz writes recipes like he writes music. Like it’s not work at all. Like it’s fun and it's soothing and it's therapy. Like she needs it.

Her pie crust is perfect, she says, and she grins. The filling’s almost there; “We only need to change a few things on this next try and it’ll be good,” she says. His brain captures that “we” and his heart holds it close. 

He can’t help that feeling swelling in his chest again. That patently out of his depth one. The one that’s telling him: you’re lost, you’re drowning, you need to get out because this could go well, but it could go badly too. 

He needs a minute, he decides. He needs to take a breather, to stop being close enough to her that he knows she smells like vanilla and coconut and something so _Claire_ that he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He spots Vinny, he tells Claire he’ll be back, he shoots across the kitchen like the ground is setting on fire behind him. “Hey, Vin,” he says, smiles, or at least tries to. 

Brad flits around the test kitchen, wandering alongside Vinny, then peering over Carla’s shoulder and stirring something particularly temperamental for Chris. He turns every now and then, watches Claire in her in element, sees her bite the end of her pen when she gets stuck, watches her seek out various members of the test kitchen for a second opinion. She comes over to him with a spoon of pumpkin pie filling. 

“Try this,” she says, offering him the spoon. She looks frustrated, and the look in her eyes is one of pure determination, and Brad decides it’s better not to say no to Claire Saffitz when she looks at you like she’s looking at him. He takes the spoon. 

Oh, _wow_. It’s good. It’s so good, the perfect texture, creamy but it held its shape on the spoon just fine, a perfect balance of spices that marry with the pumpkin seamlessly and give it a depth of flavour he’s never had in a pumpkin pie before. “It’s perfect, Claire,” he tells her, and he means it. “Fuckin’ _nailed_ it.”

Claire looks suddenly shy, unsure, and she furrows her brow at the spoon still in his hand. “You really think so?” She asks, “I wasn’t sure if it needed something. I’ve eaten so much pumpkin pie the last few days I think I’ve forgotten what it’s supposed to taste like.”

“Like this,” he says, and hands her back the spoon. “I mean it, Claire. Best pumpkin pie I ever had, don’t tell my mom.”

  
When she smiles back at him, proud of herself and delighted that he liked it, Brad almost goes blind because it has to be the most brilliant thing he’s ever seen. 

Brad likes Claire Saffitz when she’s confident. She goes back to her station, tries the pumpkin pie again, and nods to herself. Grins. She mutters, “it’s pretty good, actually, you’re right,” while looking him dead in the eye and he thinks he’ll combust. A little later, when she’s getting hungry, she tells him to show her what he can do, gives him a cutting board and a knife, helps him pick out leftover ingredients from the walk-in and lets him cook. 

Brad tells himself he’s imagining things when he turns to Claire while chopping the vegetables and sees a soft pink blush high on her cheeks, her eyes on his hands. She’s just worried he’ll cut himself. That’s all. It must be. 

* * *

Brad finishes up in time to grab his stuff from his hotel room and catch the ferry back to Jersey. He still feels off-kilter, like his heart’s working so fast his brain can’t keep up. He’s always been a feel first, think later kind of guy; it’s how he got into so much trouble as a kid, picking fights with the big kids so that they’d stop picking on the little guys. He’s never minded so much, feeling things as much as he does is how he writes songs, how he injects words with emotion in ways that others struggle to do. 

He minds now. He minds because this time his heart’s betraying him - it’s going off on its own and leaving his head playing catch up. 

When he’s finally home, his hair damp from the sudden downpour of rain outside, he grabs his guitar. He plays it, lets the music take control. He sits on the floor of his living room, his phone on and recording next to him, guitar in his lap, pencil lay atop paper with his messy scrawl all over it. His book open to the song he wrote last night, _Claire’s song_. 

He plays, he sings, he records and corrects and refines. He listens to the rain’s distant pattering against the window. 

He adds in a verse about colourful dresses and perfect pies and sunshine smiles. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i want you all to know that i am very attached to tbobac!brad 
> 
> that's all. i hope you enjoyed :)

**Author's Note:**

> basically can we start a petition to get brad wearing more denim/leather/bandanas? i need.


End file.
